A giant larvacean, Bathochordaeus charon, surrounded by its inner “house” (the rounded globular object in the middle of the photo) and it’s outer “house (the large yellowish mucus net) Credit: (c) 2013 MBARI

A mysterious sea blob that looks like a psychedelic Slinky has finally been spotted, more than a century after it was first described.

The translucent, sea-dwelling invertebrate, called Bathochordaeus charon, was identified recently off the coast of Monterey, California, by scientists using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Though B. charon was first discovered a century ago, no one had managed to confirm its existence in all those years, Rob Sherlock, a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who found the creature, told Live Science in an email. [See Photos of the Translucent Sea Blob]

Mysterious sea creature

B. charon belongs to a group of sea creatures known as larvaceans — normally teensy, millimeter-size creatures whose bodies resemble a tadpole’s, with a large “head” (actually a trunk) and a tail, Sherlock said.

Though the sea is teeming with tiny larvaceans, the larger versions, which can have bodies extending up to 3.9 inches (10 centimeters), are much less common. To eat, the sea blob filters food through its shimmering, parachute-like mucus “house” almost 3.3 feet (1 m) in length. By waving its tail, it stirs the water and pulls particles directly into its house. Large particles get trapped and form a fine dusting of marine “snow” on the house, while the smaller particles pass through, concentrating and then funneling into a feeding tube that goes into the mouth, Sherlock said. (The tiny larvaceans also don mucus homes, but they’re smaller.)

If a passing squid or fish crashes through the house, or big particles clog the feeding tube, larvaceans simply move on and build another house. Without their houses, they cannot eat, Sherlock said.

First sightings

The first report of B. charon‘s existence came in 1899, when professor Carl Chun of Leipzig University came across one in the south Atlantic Ocean while leading the Valdivia Expedition, a German mission aimed at exploring the deep sea. Chun believed the creature welled up from the deepest depths of the ocean, so he named the larvacean after Charon, who in Greek mythology ferries the souls of the dead across the river Styx, the researchers reported Aug. 16 in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records.

In the decades that followed, several other naturalists reported spotting giant larvaceans, though only a few were captured alive and described thoroughly. In 1936, for instance, British marine biologist Walter Garstang collected a set of giant larvaceans that differed from Chun’s, and they were classified as a new species, Bathochordaeus stygius. [Marine Marvels: Spectacular Photos of Sea Creatures]

Because the two sets of specimens were similar and Chun’s originals were lost to history, scientists eventually began to wonder whether Chun’s originally described B. charon was actually the same species as B. stygius. One famous larvacean expert even suggested combining the two species names, Sherlock said. Part of the difficulty in capturing these creatures is that they don’t fare well in the trawling nets typically used to collect specimens, Sherlock said.

Hiding in plain sight

Sherlock and his colleagues happened upon the new species when the team’s ROV, called Doc Ricketts, was exploring the waters of Monterey Bay. As soon as they saw it, the crew carefully collected it in a sealed, thermally insulated container.

“Since the vehicle was recovered some tens of minutes later, the animal was alive, in fantastic shape, and we preserved it right away in order to send it to the Smithsonian,” Sherlock said. “We had no idea, until we looked more closely at the specimen, that we had actually found B. charon, the species first described over a hundred years ago.”

Genetics and analysis of physical features confirmed the find, Sherlock said. It was official: There really were two distinct species of giant larvacean — B. stygius and B. charon.

“It felt like Chun had finally been vindicated after years of doubt,” Sherlock said.

When the team went back over videos from Monterey Bay from the past 25 years, they realized the creature had been spotted many times in the bay. Whether they dwell in places between Monterey Bay and the SouthAtlantic, however, remains to be seen.

Still, this mythical sea blob is fairly rare; over the course of the past few decades, biologists have seen hundreds of B. stygius, but captured footage of only a dozen B. charon individuals, Sherlock said.

If you looking for an amazing rainbow chalice then you might want to consider this AquaNerd featured coral of the week for your Christmas wish list. The Confetti Cake Chalice looks good enough to eat but at $299.00 for 3/4″ – 1″ frag you’re better off watching it grow into a beautiful colony. The coral features 4 vidid shades of red, royal blue, orange and lime sherbet green.

Chalice corals do well in varying conditions of lighting and water flow but most species are commonly placed towards the bottom to middle of the aquarium. Some of these corals even prefer areas where they are shaded from more intense lighting to combat bleaching while others do better under intense lighting. For this reason, its best to consult with an experienced grower or retailer when purchasing these corals. Sometimes hobbyists assume a group of corals all like the same conditions. This is not true with “Chalice” corals because they are often incorrectly classified or misunderstood.

Rainbow chalices like Joe’s signature colony typically prefer mid to low light four best coloration. Water flow needs to be moderate to moderate low.

Target feeding these corals will increase growth rates and can easily be done with a pipette by administering coral foods directly over each polyp or mouth. Soon after the food has been introduced, feeding tentacles will emerge and the polyps will draw the food into the mouth and passed to the gut. Chalice corals are nocturnal feeders in the wild but they will easily adapt to a daytime feeding schedule. For further enjoyment, continual daytime feedings will cause the feeding tentacles to emerge during the day even when food is not present.

]]>http://aquanerd.com/2016/12/featured-coral-of-the-week-1252016-joes-signature-confetti-cake-chalice.html/feed0Carnival’s Princess Cruise Line to Pay “Largest-Ever” Fine for Intentional Dumpinghttp://aquanerd.com/2016/12/carnivals-princess-cruise-line-to-pay-largest-ever-fine-for-intentional-dumping.html
http://aquanerd.com/2016/12/carnivals-princess-cruise-line-to-pay-largest-ever-fine-for-intentional-dumping.html#respondThu, 01 Dec 2016 18:44:10 +0000http://aquanerd.com/?p=36300The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs announced that Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. will plead guilty to seven felony charges for deliberately dumping of oily waste from its vessel the Caribbean Princess and pay a $40 million penalty which will be the “largest-ever criminal penalty involving deliberate vessel pollution.”

Princess, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc(Carnival), through a plea agreement is agreeing to plead guilty to the use of a so-called “magic pipe” for oily waste dumping and the related and intentional cover-up.

As part of Princess’ plea agreement, vessels of eight of Carnival’s companies, including Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line N.V., Seabourn Cruise Line Ltd., and AIDA Cruises, will be put under a court supervised Environmental Compliance Program (ECP) for a period of five years, requiring independent audits conducted by a third party and a court appointed monitor.

The U.S. investigation began after the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) indicated to the United States Coast Guardthat a new engineer on the Caribbean Princess, before quitting his position, had reported that the magic pipe had been used on August 23, 2013 to illegally discharge oily waste off the English coast.

The U.S. investigation team uncovered two further illegal dumping practices that took place on the Caribbean Princess along withfour other Princess ships that includes the Golden Princess, Star Princess, Grand Princess and Coral Princess.

Subject to court approval, $10 million of the $40 million fine is expected to go toward community service projects with $3 million of that total being directed to marine environmental projects in South Florida while $1 million will be directed toward projects in United Kingdom waters.

As some of our readers may know by now, we also have another business called Aquarium Specialty. What you may not know is that we are celebrating our 10th year of being in business! It’s important to mention that we rarely reference Aquarium Specialty on the AquaNerd blog because the businesses are completely separate and Aqua Nerd is not about Aquarium Specialty and vice versa. With that bit of disclosure out of the way, we felt that our readers would be interested to know about a new business that we’ve been working on for the past 8 months called Aquarium Specialty Live (ASL). The business itself is hosted on the Aquarium Specialty website, but it is a separate corporation from Aquarium Specialty.

By setting ASL up on the Aquarium Specialty website, customers will have the opportunity to purchase livestock and dry goods on the same order without the need to visit a different site or checkout more than once to complete a transaction from the same website.

Livestock orders over $200.00 will ship via FedEx overnight for free while dry good orders will continue to ship with free delivery over $99.00. Livestock orders under $200.00 will ship at a flat rate of $45.00 within the continental United States.

If you are ever near Columbia South Carolina then please stop by to see our showroom and coral farm. We’d love to show you around. To see more corals check out our online store by visiting here. We will be continuing to add corals on an almost daily basis for the foreseeable future and if you would like to keep track of new additions then please sign up for our newsletter or like us on Facebook.

Gallery of some of the corals we’ve added to ASL over the last two weeks

Quality Marine, located in Los Angeles, CA has been on a streak of acquiring and distributing more and more captive bred ornamental aquarium fish in recent months. The latest captive bred species is the Glow-Tail Pipefish. Traditionally wild caught, these fish have been hard to obtain but they have remained popular in the hobby for a few decades. Quality Marine is importing the Pipefish through Aquarium Des Lagons in French territory of New Caledonia. Read the press release below to learn more about this exciting news.

Official Quality Marine Press Release

As part of Quality Marine’s continuing effort to promote sustainability and responsibility in the aquarium trade, another commercially aquacultured first is now available through us: the Glow-Tail Pipefish (Dunckerocampus chapmani). These fish are available exclusively at Quality Marine to our customers. Due to the natural range of this animal being limited to the southwest Pacific surrounding New Caledonia, the wild specimens are only very infrequently available, making this even more exciting.

Now, the Aquarium Des Lagons in New Caledonia has successfully captive bred the Dunckerocampus chapmani. This is not the first time Aquarium Des Lagons has made a breakthrough in aquaculture; back in May of 2016, they successfully captive bred the Half-Spined Seahorse (Hippocampus semispinosus) also available exclusively through Quality Marine.

In the wild, the Glow-Tail Pipefish tends to live in the rocky crevices of sheltered lagoons; down to eight meters deep. They are endemic to the southern half of New Caledonia and the first described individual came from the peninsula of Ducos in Noumea. They feed on small crustaceans and zooplankton. Like other pipefish, the males carry the eggs in a brood pouch, which is found under their tail. The eggs are gray and fairly large compared to the body. The males only carry about 30 eggs at a time due to the size of the eggs.

In aquariums, pipefish should be kept in tanks with very peaceful, slow moving tank mates like seahorses and dragonets. They are poor swimmers thus it is important to keep the flow of the tanks low. As a result of their plodding swimming style, they are poor hunters, making it important to target feed. If given the right diet and conditions with good water quality, pipefish do quite well in aquariums. Choosing aquacultured animals will increase your chance of success in keeping pipefish. Cultured pipefish are raised on frozen small meaty foods, eliminating the need for offering live foods. Wild caught specimens often need to be fed live foods and this can sometimes be difficult and expensive.

Choosing captive bred, aquacultured and maricultured specimens is important for the future of our trade. Not only are they frequently most sustainable options, but they are also often hardier than their wild counterparts. Through the Reefhab program, Quality Marine is an active participant in making the aquarium trade more sustainable. Increasing the number of cultured species offered to our customers is an integral part of this effort.

Apogee Instruments has just announced two new PAR meters with the moniker, Underwater Quantium Flux MQ-210 and MQ-510. Both of these meters are priced the same as the MQ-200 and the MQ-500 respectively. The new meters function identically to the MQ-200 and MQ-500, but they have a built in immersion correction factor.

If your using a standard MQ-200 and MQ-500 meter, there is no reason to worry because those meters still both work great in aquarium applications. The new meters however, will work even better when their measurements are multiplied by the new immersion correction factor that is spelled out in the owner’s manuals. Apogee Instruments designed the MQ-210 and MQ-510 just to make PAR calculations a little easier on the aquarist.

Apogee Instruments tells us that they will phase out of the MQ-200 and MQ-500 for the aquarium industry over the next several months as inventories turn over.

To learn more about the new PAR sensor models, visit the Apogee Instruments page. Expect to see the new meters at online retailers in the coming days.

Just in time for the holidays, seen for the first time at RAP California this past weekend, the Artisan Drop-Off aquarium from Mode Aquariums is the first all-glass model to hit US market. A unique 75 gallon footprint is molded into a perfect drop-off peninsula to make this tank a visual feast.

As many of my friends and followers know, I am a nano girl at heart. Even though my current tank is 50 gallons, it is the largest aquarium I have ever wanted to own and as such I still consider myself a nano reefer. If I ever considered upgrading, Tis would be the on the top of my wish list. With a total system volume of 75-80 gallons, the proportions seem exactly right.

The Artisan Drop-Off is manufactured by Mode Aquariums that has been at the business of manufacturing stock and custom aquariums for many years. They have put their expertise to good use in providing ready to use aquarium systems for the discerning hobbyist. Their aquariums are a luxury line of cutting edge aquariums that are great to look at and functional too.

Combining three styles of tank into one, this tank is first and foremost, a drop-off aquarium.

As a recent hot trend in aquariums, drop-off tanks offer a unique aquascaping opportunity, with displays that are both unusual and quite different from what we are accustomed to. No longer is our imagination trapped in simple cube or rectangular shaped aquarium.

Full Peninsula: The aquarium offers 3 sides of unobstructed viewing. Starphire low-iron glass is not just on the front panel, but on all 3 viewing sides for maximum clarity from any vantage point. Using glass eliminates bowing, and easy glass maintenance underscores the advantage of this tank vs. a drop-off aquarium manufactured from acrylic.

Rimless: No explanation necessary. Rimless tanks are the gold standard for aquariums these days. The tank can hold 50 gallons.

In addition, the aquarium comes with a custom built maple solid wood cabinet. No MDF here! The Artisan Drop-Off Aquarium ships fully assembled and opens on both sides for unfettered access to the sump. The cabinet comes in white or black, factory painted with an oil based lacquer for a glossy contemporary finish that not only looks great but holds up very well to salt water.

The technical details of the tank are equally thoughtful. 36X24X20 dimensions come with a large 25 gallon 4-chamber sump and a 1000 GPH durso overflow. There is plenty of room for an oversized skimmer and reactor, a media area and even a refugium. Also included is 660 GPH DC pump with an included ¾” return line.

The system is priced to retail at $2399.00 and is available to order next week from Mode Aquariums and other online retailers.

Put your experience in customer service, affinity for technical consumer products, and love of aquariums to work at Step Ahead Innovations, a rapidly growing Vermont startup that is launching the revolutionary MindStream Monitor for automatically monitoring up to ten aquarium water parameters in real-time!

SAI is a rapidly growing startup company focused on real-time aquarium water monitoring using proprietary technology and a cloud-based “Internet of Things” user interface.

Applications should include a resume and cover letter and be sent to Beth@BethGilpin.com . You may also request a confidential conversation if you’d like more information before deciding whether or not to apply.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Beth Gilpin, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

External Recruiting Partner to Step Ahead Innovations

Position Summary

The person in this new role will initially support product beta testing while establishing SAI’s highly responsive and professional customer service operation and systems in time for product launch in the spring of 2017. As our business grows, this experienced manager will be responsible for scaling our customer service function while recruiting a team of professional service reps for servicing customers throughout North America.

Responsibilities

All SAI employees are responsible for collaborating as a team to contribute to the overall success of the organization and achievement of the company’s goals. Working together with fellow staff members, the person performing this job is primarily responsible for the following functions:

Customer Service

Ensures excellence in all aspects of customer service and support.

Hires, develops, and supports a team of highly qualified customer service staff to troubleshoot and offer assistance to external customers.

Recently, Aqua Illumination debuted its new impressive HMS mounting system at MACNA in San Diego and we had a chance to take a look at it with Tim Marks.

The lines are clean and the system can be configured in various configurations. The HMS rail can be hung from above, mounted to the back of the aquarium or side to side as show in the gif loop.

HMS Parts List:

HMS Single light

HMS Multi Light

HMS Hydra TwentySix bracket

HMS Hydra FiftyTwo bracket

HMS 25.5″ Rail

HMS 37.5″ Rail

HMS 49.5″ Rail

HMS 62.5″ Rail

HMS 73.5″ Rail

HMS Hanging Kit

In addition to the HMS series mounting options, Aqua Illumination is introducing an 18″ gooseneck for the Hydra TwentySix HD and Hydra FiftyTwo HD models, expanding the flex arm option previously only available for the AI Prime. The Hydra Flex Arm is the simplest, cleanest and affordable full-size fixture mount to date.

18″ Hydra Gooseneck

Lastly, the folks at AI have also addressed something to help us tidy up our aquarium cabinet with its new power bar bracket. Mounting your power supplies out of the water and out of the way has never been easier. The bracket is fully adjustable and secures the power brick with heavy duty Velcro, helping the aquarist with organization and reducing clutter.

Bacto Reef Balls are the first fully available marine bacteria to feature nutrient control through the use of time release technology which Fauna Marin refers to as “depot nutrient control”.

In addition to containing time released probiotic bacteria, the product also uses a carrier gel material that dissolves in conjunction with the probiotics. This specialized carrier gel, developed for marine aquariums, dissolves and allows the bacteria to be released slowly into the aquarium. The gel itself is an additional carbon source for the probiotic bacteria. This product truly is an “add it and forget it” approach to delivering carbon and probiotic bacteria for your aquarium.

The only small concern I have would be introducing too much media into an aquarium that already has high nitrate levels. This is just an educated guess on my part, but one could speculate that adding too much media in the presence of high nitrate could potentially cause a bacterial bloom in the aquarium. With that said, when nitrates are high, it would be advisable to bring nitrate levels down slowly by adding less media in the beginning and then increasing the amount as necessary. Like biopellets, this is not a product that needs to be removed before it can be replaced. As the Bacto Reef Balls slowly dissolve, they will simply get smaller and smaller until nothing is left. At that point, all the aquarists needs to do is to add more balls to the aquarium.

Bakto Reef Balls are super easy to use. Simply place the necessary amount of Reef Balls into your filter and replace every 2 weeks when the original sphere is dissolved. A steady supply of beneficial bacteria removes the need for daily vodka or liquid carbon source dosing and eliminates unwanted dosage peaks and valleys.

BACTO REEF BALLS overview:

Crystal clear, healthy water

Simplifies nutrient control: reduces nitrogen and phosphates

Reduces unwanted algae growth

Provides cost-effective and efficient means of nutrient control

Supports natural bacterial flora

Eliminates annoying bacterial plaque and detritus build-up

Removes organic waste products

Reinforces the skimming process and minimizes cleaning intervals

Easy-to-follow dosage schedule

Unique depot effect, thereby effective for weeks per dose

When I first saw these in the Fauna Marin booth at MACNA I said to Claude Shumacher, the owner of Fauna Marin, that I really thought he had a winner with this new product. Reef Balls are available in 100ml, 250ml and 500ml containers and the pricing is $14.99, $28.99 and $49.99 respectively.

We are excited to begin testing Bacto Reef Balls on one of our many aquariums as soon as it becomes available in the US. For more information on Fauna Marin products please visit the Fauna Marin website.